


Honour-bound

by 5-5-k (Vsquaredk)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Based on a Tumblr Post, Except I prompted it myself? whoops, F/F, Gen, Lena-centric, Light Angst, SciFi Aging Soulmate AU, i have no idea what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21801520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vsquaredk/pseuds/5-5-k
Summary: On occasion, she dreamt of impossible futures. OfHer, of hair that looked like spun gold in the sun, bright blue eyes that twinkled with laughter but looked into Lena with unbridled love and passion. Of broad, muscular shoulders, wide smiles, and love, always love.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	Honour-bound

**Author's Note:**

> So, tumblr user Reliquiaen, made this post a while ago:
> 
> _"AU where people age until they reach 18 and then stop aging until they meet their soul mate so they can grow old together."_
> 
> To which I added [about 15 different potential scenarios](https://5-5-k.tumblr.com/post/189670038922/rmh8402-xx-thedarklord-xx), but one in particular wouldn't leave me alone:
> 
> _Imagine the world leaders testing young people to find the geniuses and forcibly isolating them all to ensure that “the best minds” never die. And society being ok with that._  
>    
> So here we are! I hope you enjoy!

Lena didn’t have to be a genius to know she was dreaming; after all, it had been… by this point, well over a millenium since she had last seen grass, or trees, or even the sun. Since she had seen anything other than the dark walls of her Cubicle, or the Data Stream. She had only ever had fleeting, momentary dreams, always in that space between being fully under and coming into wakefulness. She always relished her dreams, because anything was better than the artificial light emitting from the tiny rows of light diodes in the walls, and the knowledge that she was currently encased in a stasis pod, somewhere in the deepest depths of space.

More often than not, she dreamt of years past, of melancholic nostalgia, of family and friends that had long since found their Matches and passed on. Of times of blissful ignorance, before she was thrust into her tortuous and long duty to humanity. Before her family had cheered with pride as she clutched her passing grade, rumpled from her anxiety, in her hand, only to send her on her way. Before she spent what would have been her Aging ceremony alone in a spartan Cubicle orbiting the planet.

_(She hadn’t aged a day since then. Sometimes, when she was awake and before she would receive her assignments, she caught herself wishing for grey hair, for laugh lines, for deteriorating eyesight and trifocals, for wrinkles that told the world the story of her love… but wishful thinking got her nowhere. It never did.)_

On occasion, she dreamt of impossible futures. Of _Her_ , of hair that looked like spun gold in the sun, bright blue eyes that twinkled with laughter but looked into Lena with unbridled love and passion. Of broad, muscular shoulders, wide smiles, and love, always love. Of children, of new families… She both hated and loved those dreams, because _She_ never aged either. Lena couldn’t imagine how _She_ must feel, amongst the populous, watching _Her_ loved ones Match and Aging while _She_ was stuck, forever 18, because Lena was bound to the isolation of her duty.

So, dreaming innocuously of flying wasn’t such a bad thing, all things considered. Lena was able to look down from blue skies (blue like _Her_ eyes) onto the green sloping hills below. There were tiny, multicoloured dots. People, she decided, communing together like she would never again be able to. But in this brief moment, she was free, autonomous, not bound to her duty. She couldn’t begrudge her subconscious the constancy of loneliness, because it was a relief to feel her lungs balloon with fresh, unrecycled air, to feel the mist of the clouds upon her skin, the sun on her face. She was too busy savoring the bite of colder atmospheric temperatures, of colour and sounds no longer familiar to her in any way except in dreams. She was too busy watching the sun reflect brightly off a pond below her (so like the highlights in _Her_ hair) to pay any heed to the tug of loneliness in her heart.

Her stasis cycle would end soon, and it was rare for her to have a moment’s reprieve while (semi-)conscious. She wanted to bask in it as long as she could. The 13-X automaton would arrive soon, with a new assignment that only Lena could complete. Once in the Data Stream, she would have no time for frivolous things like dreams.

❖ ❖ ❖

This time, it was the chime of the door that roused Lena from stasis. Her eyes blinked awake to the glass lid of the pod sliding open to reveal, through a cloud of frosty air, the metal ceiling of her Cubicle. She groaned quietly, her body stiff from disuse, and still chilled from her waking protocol, knowing that she would need to actually pull herself out of the pod soon. She heard the 13-X roll into the room with a whisper, and as she pulled herself into a seated position, noticed the tray in front of it. Upon it was a neat stack of sustenance packages, and her Unit.

Lena pulled herself, shakily, out of the pod. Out of habit, she held back her hiss of discomfort over the cold floors, and stood at attention. Shoulders rolled back, chin up, eyes forward, bare feet together, and clad in only her form-fitting stasis suit, Lena was ready by the time the 13-X slowed to a stop 2 steps away.

Idly, without so much as moving a muscle, Lena noticed the machine had undergone a slight upgrade. They had upgraded from a chrome finish to a more sleek, glossy white carbon fibre body, but otherwise it had not changed too much. Good. So not too much time had passed since she had been awake last. As she mused internally, the 13-X’s screenface flickered on.

       
`   
_GOOD DAY, LENA LUTHOR._   
_IT IS A PLEASURE TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GREATNESS._   
`   

`   
`

Lena fought her desire to roll her eyes. Instead, her voice was almost monotone as she spoke her customary reply. “It is always an honour and a privilege to serve the Planetary Alliance.”

She didn’t dare let her critical feelings show; the one time she had, near the beginning of her time there, they had put something in her sustenance package that had made her mind foggy. Her Unit had so violently rejected her consciousness that she had spent a week retching and dry-heaving into the toilet. The delay had been detrimental to the success of her assignment, and once the brain fog had lifted, Lena had learnt that her great-great-great grand nephew, who had been named after her own father, had died of an apparent stroke. They claimed it was a coincidence, but Lena had her doubts.

She held her breath, anxious, as the 13-X took its time accepting her reply. It was only when the screen flickered to green that Lena let out an imperceptible sigh of relief.

       
`   
_LENA LUTHOR,_   
_WE ARE IN NEED OF YOUR PARTICULAR SKILLSET._   
_ARE YOU READY AND WILLING TO SERVE THE ALLIANCE?_   
`   

``  


Lena nodded and turned, bracing herself on her pod with one hand as she lifted her hair with the other to expose the Stem-link at the base of her skull. She tried not to flinch when she heard hydraulics activate, so that the 13-X could connect to her neural pathway. It always stung a bit, and Lena had done everything in her power to make it less painful, but there was something about engaging with the brainstem that hurt. Her last thought before the neural connection fired was that she really needed to finish developing the wireless version. If she could finish this assignment early, she would be able to finally make the necessary modifications to the schematics and maybe even prototy-

Her eyes suddenly rolled back into her skull as a deluge of data flooded in. A small, cocky part of her preened at the efficiency of the Stem-link. It was outdated, yes, but it was still lightyears ahead of what briefings had previously constituted prior to its invention over a century ago.

Within 2 microseconds, Lena knew:

  * 3 years had passed while she was in stasis
  * It had been her 1329th birthday last week
  * A Luthor, one of her brother’s descendents, had failed their Mastery Exam (Lena tried not to thank the Fates for that tiny boon, even as she learned of the disappointment that her family had shown them)
  * Another Luthor, one several years beyond their Aging ceremony, had found their Match. (Lena tried not to feel jealousy over the grey that was beginning to pepper their beard)
  * Her last assignment, which involved the finishing touches on the equation necessary for intergalactic travel, had been such a success that her family had been granted a large plot of land on the recently terraformed Gliese 832 C.



Another of her technological advancements, was needed desperately needed on the new planetary colony. It was due for a significant upgrade, one that would allow the technology to survive on new planets and star systems.

As usual, that was where she came in. It was, apparently, too much of a challenge for the others at the Office, and so the responsibility had come to rest on her shoulders. Her mind was already sifting through the information that had been uploaded through the Stem-link: atmospheric readings, gravitational forces, new equations, radiation signatures of new solar systems, new elements that had been discovered through interplanetary travel…

Lena blinked back into her Cubicle as the 13-X disengaged from her Stem-link. She whirled around, already lifting the flap on the sleeve of her stasis suit for the first of her sustenance packages. Her eyes flicked over to the tray, where five of them lay, and scoffed; she would only need two, at the most. The 13-X plugged the first sustenance package in, then rolled off to the dreaded Workpod in the corner of the room. As she trailed after it, Lena could already begin to feel the small device’s effects; the fabric of stasis suit was a marvel, allowing for dermal absorption of any energy she would need throughout her assignment.

Her Workpod slid open with a hiss, and Lena grimaced before climbing in. She reached for her Unit, a simple neural interface helmet of her own design, and strapped it in place, before flipping the Visorscreen down over her eyes and placing a tiny breathing apparatus over her nose and mouth. As the pod slowly began filling with a cold, dark, viscous fluid, the 13-X checked her Unit’s aural nodes and plugged her Unit into her Stem-link.

❖ ❖ ❖

As always, the last moments before she began any assignment were her least favourite moments. When her Workpod was closed but not yet filled, when she was forced to wait, suspended, immovable, and weightless, for her Unit to be switched on, she always had to fight her panicked “What If”s.

_What if a meteor suddenly struck the Office and took the Workpod’s systems offline?_

_What if her consciousness was stuck in the Data Stream as her body slowly suffocated without new sustenance packages?_

_What if she took too long to come to a conclusion and she was deemed irrelevant?_

_What if she miscalculated, and millions of lives were lost due to her error?_

_What if this was the last time the Alliance needed her, and she was decommissioned? What would become of her then?_

Sometimes, her mind would cope by tricking her into seeing through the walls to the inky blackness of space, but her rational mind knew these were mere hallucinations brought on by her need to cope with the terror of the unknown.

Sometimes, she would see her younger self, and would alternate between telling her to lie on her Mastery Exam and be free of the shackles of duty, or telling her to do the best she could, because her duty gave her purpose.

Sometimes, like this time, just as her Unit pulled her into the Data Stream, she would see a glimpse of blonde curls, bright blue eyes, and a familiar smile that would bring an unsolicited, almost addictive, contentedness and peace to her soul, and a lightness to her heart.

Those were the worst times.

Lena couldn’t afford the tantalizing distraction, as much as she had wanted, no, yearned to meet her Match as a child. She had a duty to uphold.

❖ ❖ ❖

It was an honour and a privilege to give her talents to the Planetary Alliance.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want more or you want to yell at me, feel free to comment, kudos, send me an ask on tumblr (same username) or hit me up on Twitter (@v2k1k1; feel free to request!)


End file.
